The G. G. (before figure of Aladdin's uncle, selling new lamps for old) - Here you are, you see! "Ali Baba," got 'em all here, you see. Never read your "Arabian Nights," either? Is that the way they bring up boys nowadays?

Percy. Well, the fact is, grandfather, that unless a fellow reads that kind of thing when he's young, he doesn't get a chance afterwards.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN

SOULS.

IN the second of two interesting papers on the manners, customs, superstitions, and religions of South African tribes (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xix. No. 3, and vol. xx. No. 2), the Rev. James Macdonald, who has had ample opportunities of studying the subject, The Aunt (still quoting). "In the fa- has a good deal to say about the doctrine mous work," Bobby, "by which we know of souls which prevails among the aborigMasûdi, he mentions the Persian Hezar ines of South Africa. It is extremely Afsane-um-um-um - nor have commenta- | difficult, he explains, to discover what the tors failed to notice that the occasion of | people really believe about the spirit the book written for the Princess Homai world, so many and varied are the tradiresembles the story told in the Hebrew tions relating to it. There are, however, Bible about Esther, her mother or grand- certain outstanding facts common to all; mother, by some Persian Jew two or three and of these Mr. Macdonald gives a clear centuries B.C." Well, I never knew that | and instructive account. before! This is "Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea"-let's see what they say about him. (Reads.) "Both the story of Sindbad and the old Basque legend of Tartaro are undoubtedly borrowed from the Odyssey of Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey were translated into Syriac, in the reign of Harun-ur-Rashid.' Dear, dear, how interesting, now! and, Bobby, what do you think some one says about "Jack and the Beanstalk?" He says: "this tale is an allegory of the Teutonic Al-fader, the red hen representing the allproducing sun; the moneybags, the fer. tilizing rain; and the harp, the winds." Well, I'm sure it seems likely enough, doesn't it?

[Bobby suppresses a yawn; Percy's feelings are outraged by receiving a tin trumpet from the Lucky Tub; general move to the scene of the Hampstead Tragedy.

Mr.

All human beings are supposed to have souls, but their souls are not believed to be entirely confined to the body. A man's soul may, it is thought, occupy the roof of his hut, and, if he changes his residence, his soul does so at the same time. Macdonald takes this to be a loose and indefinite way of expressing "the belief that a man's spirit may have influence at a distance from the place where he is himself at any time." The people often use the word zitunzela- from isitunzi, shadows-to express their ideas of human spirits and the unseen world generally ; |and this is “ the nearest description that can be obtained." A man is constantly attended by the shadows or spirits of his of one who dies without speaking to his ancestors as well as his own, but the spirit children shortly before death never visits his descendants except for purposes of evil. In such cases magicians or priests offer costly sacrifices to prevent misfortune and death.

Before the Hampstead Tableaux. Great importance is attached to dreams Spectators. Dear, dear, there's the or visions, which are supposed to be due dresser, you see, and the window, broken to spirit influence. When the same dream and all; it's wonderful how they can do it ! | comes more than once, the dreamer conAnd there's poor Mrs. 'Ogg-it's real sults the magicians, who profess to rebutter and a real loaf she's cutting, and ceive revelations through dreams. If the the poor baby, too! Here's the actual dreamer has seen "a departed relative," casts taken after they were murdered. Oh, the magician says, "Ile is hungry." Then and there's Mrs. Pearcey wheeling the a beast is killed; the blood is collected, perambulator-it's the very perambula- and placed in a vessel at the side of the tor! No, not the very one .they've got | hut farthest from the door; the liver is that at the other place, and the piece of hung up in the hut, and must not be eaten toffee the baby sucked. Have they really! until all the flesh of the animal has been Oh, we must try and go there, too, before used. The "essence" of the food is the children's holidays are over. And this "withdrawn" by the spirit during the is all? Well, well, everything very nice, night, and after a specified time all may be I will say. But a pity they couldn't get eaten except the portions which the magi the real perambulator! cian orders to be burned.

Ancestor-worship is not only professed | not a blow was struck, and every man took by the South African tribes, but "they to his heels, making for the nearest hidactually regulate their conduct by it." ing-place in the mountain or forest. That Says Mr. Macdonald : army never reassembled. Black-hearted fear utterly demoralized it."

768 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ON REALISM AND IDEALISM.

the magicians gave the soldiers a charm | volcano in the immediate vicinity. I do against English bullets. It was the blue flower of a species of rhododendron. "Those who carried this talisman rushed forward against columns of infantry without a shadow of fear or hesitation, and only when men began to bite the dust in all directions did the nature of the delusion break upon the army, and panic ensue."

From The Melbourne Argus. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ON REALISM

AND IDEALISM.

not say it is not so in real life. I only say that in life nobody cares. If he is meeting his sweetheart or combating his enemy at the moment, cesspool, corpse, and volcano are all blotted from his mind. He does not look out of the window to analyze a smell and consider the miserable fate of humanity or the geological conditions of the earth. He does not care a farthing candle if the whole thing is going to explode to-morrow. At that moment he is all upon the present passion, and his being thrills. It is this sympathetic thrill of emotion that I miss in so-called realists. Writers appear to have become infected with a desire to imitate painters. LaboI AM an idealist, so they tell me. At rious and minute description became the least there are several gentlemen whom disease of literature. We can make our everybody agrees to call realists whose hero speak, we can make him move, we talents I admire extremely, but whose can make him think, we can make him works I should not care to write, even if travel, we can let him grow old, we can I were able. I do not know whether they let him die and even hear what his survivadmire my talents, but some of them are ors say of him. But one thing we cannot kind enough to assure me that they would do: we cannot tell him what he looked rather die than write my works. I believe like. Observe the efforts of artists to realthe realists, or rather some of the sillier ize characters, even the most elaborately of them, object to invention altogether, described. Every draughtsman makes a and must have everything a document, as new thing of them. One-sense literature they call it, and taken out of a note-book. can only serve by a half-miraculous tour This is a question of sentiment. I sus- de force, and that sense is the sense of pect most of our inventions are docu- sight. I believe they are blinded, on the mentary enough, and taken out of the one hand, by a technical preoccupation, note-book of the memory. I will give you by the supposed necessity of perpetual a couple of examples from my own case. minute and always original observation; Some five or six years after I had written while they are blinded, on the other hand, "Treasure Island" I picked up Washing. by the habit of living in towns, in a mean, ton Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," and poky, hole-and-corner civilization, where there I find Billy Bones, with his voice, they live in clubs and restaurants, never his manner, his talk, his sabre cut, his sea seeing people in the open air, in their chest, and all that is Billy Bales's. I had working clothes and undergoing healthy read it long ago and, if you will allow me toils and dangers. Pierre Loti and De a bull, I had forgotten but my memory had Maupassant are the two that are by far the remembered. Again, I fondly supposed most sympathetic to me in their methods, I had invented a scene when Alan Breck and the only two of whom I absolutely quarrels with one of the McGregors in a know that they have had some good expe house in Balquidder. Here in Sydney, rience of the open air and of a healthy not two days ago, a gentleman informs life. I am like a Highland skipper, of me that I had read the outlines of that whom I once asked the meaning of a scene, even to the names of the three Gaelic name, and who replied, seemingly principal characters engaged, in "Pit- in physical agony: "A canna say it, but a cairn's Criminal Trials." We authors all feel it in ma breest." Any way that I rearrange that matter of observed life with could put it in words would sound somewhich our memories are charged, and the thing far harsher than I mean. I will deal most we can mean by the word invention perfectly frankly with you. I do not know is some happy congruity or surprise in what idealism means. I do not know the method of arranging it. The realists what realism means. I try to represent will not let themselves enjoy anything. what seems to me conspicuous and repreThe moment anything enjoyable appears sentable in the world in which I live. I they must remind the reader that there is try to give pleasure or to awaken intera cesspool under the kitchen floor, a est. I see the defects, I see the inherent corpse in the back parlor cupboard, and auntruths.

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